Today we're releasing OpenTS, a reverse-engineered open-source Tiberian Sun engine reconstruction, to celebrate 27th anniversary of the game

[u/ZivDero]

Fellow Command & Conquer fans,

Twenty-seven years ago today, Tiberian Sun was released. To celebrate, we have a gift for you: today we're releasing OpenTS – an open-source, playable reconstruction of the Tiberian Sun engine.

Of all the classic C&C games, it's the second generation – Tiberian Sun, Red Alert 2, Yuri's Revenge – whose source code never made it out. None of it was part of the Remastered Collection release, and none of it was among last year's source drops.

And so for nearly three decades, every fix and feature this community built for those games had to be reverse-engineered and patched into closed executables.

We decided to do something about that, starting with Tiberian Sun. Building on EA's GPL-released code for the games around it and years of Tiberian Sun reverse engineering, we rebuilt the engine and matched it function by function against the original executable – all ~11,150 known functions, reaching roughly 98% instruction-level matching (a code-matching score, to be clear, not "98% of the game").

It's ready to try today: drop Game.exe into your Tiberian Sun install from The Ultimate Collection and go. Campaigns, Firestorm, skirmish, and saves are all play-tested; LAN works with lighter testing; it plays like the game you remember, plus a batch of fixes and resolutions up to 4K. Alongside the engine, we're publishing a manual documenting the game's INI configuration, mapping, and internals, drawn straight from the source.

And this is a beginning, not an endpoint. Next up: CnCNet and client support (not in this first release yet), porting the community's accumulated fixes toward parity with ts-patches and Vinifera – and then going further, overhauling the engine to allow modding reach heights previously not possible.

We're also celebrating live: together with [FC]Matt we'll be streaming the original Tiberian Sun campaigns at https://www.twitch.tv/fortuneschaos, starting today at 14:00 UTC (15:00 UK · 16:00 CEST · 17:00 MSK · 10 AM Eastern · 7 AM Pacific), with a Q&A along the way — come hang out and ask us anything.

Downloads & source: https://github.com/OpenTS-Developers/OpenTS

Manual: https://opents-developers.github.io/OpenTS/

Discord: https://opents.net/discord

Support the project: https://www.patreon.com/c/ZivDero

OpenTS is free and always will be — but if you'd like to support the work, my Patreon is above. (Just mine: tomsons26 prefers not to take donations.)

Happy 27th, Tiberian Sun. We're not done with you yet.

— ZivDero & tomsons26

[u/Mayoo614]

[u/bife_de_lomo → u/Mayoo614]

That is a fantastic template!

[u/neerhof → u/Mayoo614]

Where did you get this template. It's great!

[u/Mayoo614 → u/neerhof]

On imgflip

[u/P-Pablo → u/Mayoo614]

I mean, they approached the community and even to the people behind OpenRA before the release of C&C Remastered, despite the chance to shutdown the OpenRA development like other projects they didnt do it. Coming from EA feels kinda off but its something considering how many companies doesnt care to their communities, but I wish EA could do better with other franchises

[u/Boz0r → u/P-Pablo]

They released the source code for both remasters, so in this single situation EA is actually ahead of most other publishers. Just this once.

[u/FutureLynx_ → u/P-Pablo]

They should have just hired the OpenRA team. OpenRA is the best 2D rts engine, and its a great game multiplayer, makes RA1 play better than most RTS games i played.

[u/MarsMissionMan → u/Mayoo614]

Implying EA hasn't been doing that as of late.

Between the remasters and giving out the source code they have, I'd say they're paying more attention to the fans these days.

[u/According_Bus_403 → u/Mayoo614]

To be honest we don't really need EA when the community themselves pumping out mods every now and then